HBO Loves Entourage

By Aaron 9/1/2007

With tomorrow’s season four finale of Entourage approaching, and without a clear schedule for the show’s return, we have little Entourage to look forward to besides reruns. While this saddened me at first, I realized that Entourage is the perfect HBO show for the very reason that its reruns are just as good the second time around.

HBO thrives on bringing the same thing over and over to your TV sets every night. After it is first aired, Entourage usually airs at least every day afterwards. And if you get both HBOEAST and HBOWEST, your ability to watch Entourage reruns is made even easier. Plus, HBO frequently shows HBO episodes in large clusters preceding the next episode, sometimes showing as many as eight episodes straight the day before the next new episode.

Is this good TV? Entourage reruns are great because they are good again, again and again. Since Entourage is just about the Hollywood high life we all aspire to, anyone can sit down and watch any episode at any time. Entourage’s humor is casual-friend-humor – basically the type of jokes and actions guys make with their friends, which means missing an episode here or there, or watching for the first time takes nothing away from the show. For guys, the girls alone are an easy attracting that keeps them glued in their seats by the time the sixth straight episode comes on.

Why does HBO do this? HBO does this because they have limited programming and do not sell ads, but time slots. They do this with HBO movies and almost any other content they have got – but Entourage stands alone. Entourage reruns are more popular and provide the best vehicle for HBO to draw viewers with reruns.

Previous shows like The Sopranos, Carnivale, Deadwood, Rome, Oz and recently, John From Cincinnati, are not as easy to plug into the HBO rerun machine. This is because those shows are deeply intellectual and consecutive episodes build on each other. This makes limited viewing of these shows harder and less appealing because viewers do not know what is going on – possible inside jokes or cynicisms are lost if the show is only seen in bits and pieces.

Heady stuff? Irrelevant babble? Where were the predictions for the finale? Tough luck. If you want to catch the Entourage finale before reruns, watch it Sunday, on HBO, 10pm eastern, 9pm central.

Could “Avatar” Win Best Picture?

By Brett Hogan

 

Last week, the trailer for James Cameron’s sci-fi experiment “Avatar” debuted. While initially unimpressed with the teaser, I began to wonder: Could this film win best picture? 

 

Buzz has been generating for this movie for years. Years. The technology to make this movie didn’t exist when Cameron conceived it, so he invented it. When is the last time you heard of a director spearheading the invention of anything? The casting started in 2005. Most movies these days, even epics, are done in half that time. I could go on. 

 

The most important thing to take away from all of this is that people are saying this will be the future of movies. Now, I don’t agree with the idea that CGI will become more prevalent than it already is. But I do believe that this will set the bar miles higher for sci-fi. I mean, that is what Titanic did. And that won some awards if memory serves.

 

I’ll bet you’re asking yourself, how can you even suggest that a film like this will win Best Picture when the initial trailer was nothing better than visual stimulation? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, the Academy has expanded Best Picture to ten films. This doesn’t guarantee anything other than improved chances for most films on the cusp.

 

Second, after last year’s Oscars debacle, which saw the best film of the year, “The Dark Knight,” not only get shafted in awards but nominations as well, the Academy is pulling out all the stops to appease those with the loudest voices in the film industry, the fanboys. Now, the Academy probably didn’t lose anything because of that other than some viewers of the award show. Perhaps if people are again outraged with the winners or nominees, the heads of the Academy would lose their jobs. So this is all about the Academy protecting itself, which is not so outrageous.  

 

 

Third, there is an economic motive here. I’ve heard this film will cost $190 million, not counting the R&D costs associated with Cameron’s inventions or the cost of getting 3-D cameras into every theater in the country. The Academy will do everything in its power to get people into the seats and make this the next “Titanic” or “The Dark Knight.” But the Academy doesn’t have much power, besides nominating and awarding, so they will slap the “Nominated for Best Picture” moniker onto every commercial and print ad to get the people who didn’t believe the critics to relent and see this movie.

 

Of course, all of this is pure conjecture, and no revolutionary film (Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, etc.) has ever won the Best Picture category because it changed the game. Except maybe Titanic. But still, could this movie actually win? My answer is no but a nomination is certain and who knows what could happen from there. We’ll know more come February 2010.